God Searches For You this Advent and Asks, “Where are you?” – Advent 2025

Summary

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After Adam and Eve hid in the garden, God called out, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). That same question echoes through every heart today. In this talk, we’ll explore how God’s first question to humanity reveals His merciful pursuit of us—and how Advent invites us to respond. Discover how repentance is not about fear or shame, but about letting ourselves be found by the God who still comes searching for us.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“When they heard the sound of the LORD God walking about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. The LORD God then called to the man and asked him: Where are you?”

Genesis 3:8-9

1. Where are you in your relationship with God?

2. How do you respond when your sin is confronted? Are you filled with shame or do you blame others like Adam and Eve? When was the last time you went to confession?

3. What aspects of your life do you need to confront but are afraid to? What’s one step you can take this season to own up to that sin and work on ridding it from your life?

4 How might embracing the penitential aspect of Advent deepen your celebration of Christmas?

Text:  God Searches For You this Advent and Asks, “Where are you?”

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Hi, my name is Michael Gormley, and we’re going to keep going on this wonderful Pray More Advent Retreat. Our goal today is to examine the haunting, and tender phrase from God right after the fall, “Where are you?” Now, I love talking about the book of Genesis and I could do it for hours, and hours and hours and I have, and it’s online a lot of it because I can’t help but talk about this stuff. So what we’re going to do now is we’re going to pray that I stay on point and focused, so that this talk can be meaningful for your beautiful advent retreat.

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father and the Son, of the Holy Ghost, Amen. Heavenly Father, we praise You always. We thank You for the gift of Your divine revelation and for all of the interesting, fascinating, confusing, and sometimes even terrifying things that are contained therein. Lord God, we know that everything in scripture is for the purpose of our salvation, that You revealed yourself to us through the words of scripture, so that we might know You as You truly are. And we also see humanity as it truly is with all the good, and even with all the evil.

So help us Lord God, to understand these things with Your mind, with a mind that inspired them. Help us to be attentive to what the sacred authors intended when they wrote these words, so that we can understand its meaning and in understanding grow in holiness. And Lord God, keep me brief and focused because you know how much I love to talk about Genesis chapter three, in your name we pray, amen. In the name of the Father and the Son, of the Holy Ghost, amen.

Genesis Chapter Three

Alright, y’all we’re going to go through Genesis chapter three. I just want to say a couple things. I think this is so fascinating. All of salvation was lost, right? Lost, gone forever. Adios, was gone in six verses, right? Verse one, we get the serpent introduction, right? Then we have Eve’s reply, which she takes a couple verses, then the serpent replies, which takes a couple verses. Then she eats the fruit. Did the Lord God say no, we can eat the fruit, just don’t eat the fruit in the middle? Oh, well, God actually said, “You will not die. You’ll become like God’s, knowing good and evil.” Oh, okay. So she saw somewhere good for food, pleasing to the eye, desirable to make one wise. So she took the fruit and ate it, which gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. And then verse seven, “The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked, so they covered themselves.” One translation says, made aprons of fig leaves for themselves.

I like that idea, aprons. It says kiss the cook, right? Yeah. An apron of fig leaves. Where do they put the fig leaves? Do you know what body part? Do they cover the wrists? No, we know what they covered, right? The parts of our body that have the least dignity, we surround it with dignity, right? We clothe it with dignity and modesty, and all this wonderful stuff because there’s so much power there in, and in meaning and symbolism there in our human life and sexuality and procreative potential. And it involves the love between men and women, and all of this stuff.

Why is it that the first man and the first woman in failing, in falling had to hide themselves, think about this from one another? They’re the only married couple in the world, and they have to hide themselves from one another. Then we go into verse eight, and I’m going to look on my screen here because I got the exact verbiage “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” This little personal note you will hear the rabbis say this often, that Adam walked with the Lord in the cool today, that God was showing up to Adam at the time when they walked through the garden together, right?

 “And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?” That’s verse nine. “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?”

Yahweh

So first thing I want to make a note of, whenever you see the phrase, Lord God, the word Lord, Adonai, in Hebrew is a substitute word. What they had was the word Yahweh, which is like the proper name that God gave to Moses at the burning bush. And they don’t want to use, and this is something that happened much later in Israel’s history. There’s like over 6,000 references in the Old Testament of the name Yahweh. And then they went through and they decided not to say the name of God, that it’s disrespectful. So they retroactively went through, and replaced the name Yahweh with Adonai, which means Lord. So whenever you see Lord God, especially when Lord is spelt with small caps like capital l-O-R-D, but the O-R-D are still caps, they’re small caps, that’s Yahweh, right? That’s like Jesus. That’s the personal noun, or personal name that God revealed to Moses. So Yahweh, God, there’s all these gods that claim, all these beings that claim to be god’s, demons. All these stuff claim our worship. But here in the book of Genesis, it’s so beautiful that God reveals Himself by just being with Adam and Eve, okay?

A Call To Repentance

And this is the motif of the presence that I think is so powerful for us, especially during Advent to recapture. You see when God said, “Where are you?” I think many of us think of God as this super anthropomorphized, like He’s kind of a man. You know, God’s so lofty. We’re going to use like human imagery to describe God. Like, oh God, repented of something, well if He’s omniscient, how can He repent if he knows everything, right? If he, you know so it’s characteristics like that, that the Bible uses to make God’s actions more understandable. But sometimes I think we do that way too much. And we actually think that God is actually like that. Like He’s like a man, and He is walking around this garden being like, where did they go? They were just here a minute ago. I had them right over there. They were waiting for me by the tree. Oh no, right? Like I think that’s silly. It’s so silly. That accent was silly. I think it’s so silly for us to imagine God in this mode, right?

The Old Testament also paints God as the omniscient, all knowing, all powerful, right? God of the universe. In fact, it says that God’s footsteps shattered the cedars of Lebanon. So when God was walking in the garden and Adam, and Eve dove into the shrubbery, it wasn’t because God was confused as to where they went, they were trembling in fear because judgment day has come.

See, when you feel that pang of guilt, when you know that mortal sin, and then you know you got found out, you feel the shame and the guilt just flood your soul. So think about that, at the fall when they looked at one another in their nakedness, they immediately covered themselves and then God shows up and then they hide themselves, which is a dumb move for you know, anyone to hide themselves from someone who’s omniscient. Not a great plan, but think about this. God’s call, “Where are you” is not then when seen from the eyes of the divine nature, is not this helpless, confused plea, rather it is a summons to judgment.

It is a call to repentance. See, this is the difference between God, and a lot of the ancient deities. When He comes in judgment, He doesn’t just come with wrath and hate, He gives mercy, patience. He issues a call, He invites. So this is a question, where are you? What Adam and Eve should have done was they should have run to the Lord God. And they should have thrown themselves at His feet, whatever that means in a scenario. And they should have said, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against You. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, but rather make me a slave in your house. That’s what they should have said.

But what did they do? They hid. And then God called out, “Where are you?” In relationship to me, where are you? I mean, we can ask that question. That’s the call to repentance. I mean, the first words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel are not, I love you. The first words of Jesus is repent, and believe in the gospel.

See, this is the amazing thing, right? You and I are aware of being sinners, and yet our ego protection is so crazy that we play the blame game and the hiding game, we hide because we think we can get away with it. Oh, maybe they’ll forget. Maybe God will just move on. Maybe His presence I won’t be held accountable to. So they dive into the shrubs, and then when they get found out and they come before God, what do they do? He immediately blames the woman. It was the woman that you put here with me. This is ego protection at its absolute most absurd. And that’s why it’s so perfect in this short story of a handful of verses. “It was the woman that you put here with me.” She gave me the fruit, bid me to eat, and I ate of it. Then he turns to the woman. Well, it was the serpent. He deceived me. He tricked me. I mean, I know you said don’t eat it, but he said eat it because God’s holding out on you.

See, here’s the genesis of sin. If I could be so bold as to use the name of the book, the genesis of sin is when we first begin to doubt God’s generosity towards us, then we look for shortcuts to getting our will done. And then when we look for the shortcuts, our hearts open to compromise. See, the serpent got Eve to focus on the limits of her freedom. She does not give herself the moral code, the moral law, God does. Here’s a tree, don’t eat it. But she looked at the tree and she said, why not? Why not? It is desirable, it’s good for food, pleasing to the eye and desirable to make one wise.

The Situation Is Not Hopeless

Everyone of our sins starts this exact same way. We doubt God’s generosity. So here’s my question to you. Where are you? Where are you in your relationship to God? As Catholics, many of us were not really taught how to repent, only how to go to confession. And I feel like for many of us, we go to confession. We treat it like a car wash. Like yep, I did these things, I’m going to go through it, get them a list and I’m out. You know what the number one thing you should ask your parish pastor if this is true, but the number one thing priests say to me, that is their most, like the worst, highest annoyance in the confessional is when spouses confess their spouse’s sin. When a wife confess her husband’s sin or vice versa, you know, oftentimes these priests will just be like, you know I have, It’s happens so often and just let them go. And then when they’re done, be like, now that you’re done with that, can you confess the sin of gossip? Like it’s awful. But why do we do that? Even in the confessional, we engage in ego protection. I’m not really this bad. Yeah, you are. Have you met you? You’re pretty bad. But the situation is not hopeless. And this is the beautiful turn of our Catholic Christian faith.

The situation is not hopeless because God takes the first step. First is the invitation. Well, Adam and Eve snubbed the invitation, then it’s the confrontation. Adam and Eve passed the buck, but lastly is the promise. He turns to He punishes the man, he punishes the woman. The woman is given painful childbirth. The man is given toilsome labor. And the serpent though, the serpent, he curses.

He punishes the others, but he curses the serpent. And in the middle of cursing the serpent, he promises a future redemption. “I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Up until now, there’s only one the woman, and that’s Eve. But there would be another woman who is at enmity with the serpent. Eve is not at enmity with the serpent, and she will have an offspring between your seed and her seed. I don’t know if you know biology, but women don’t have seed. Mm. I got eggs. So that’s why this is signaling something interesting. A woman who needs not the natural seed of a man, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, he will crush your head and you will bite at his heel.”

That’s what serpents do. They bite at your heels in the tall grass and we stomp on their heads. See, the beautiful gift of the blessed Virgin Mary to the world was her fiat, her let it be done unto me, according to thy word. God blessed her and in blessing her, blessed her with an offspring that did not need the seed of a man in order to generate new life. And that life is the light of the world. “Where are you?” That’s the call to repentance. But then He gave the promise when all hope seemed lost.

Repentance is Powerful

GK Chesterton had this great line where he said, “Christian hope begins where human hope ends.” Adam and Eve, after passing the and shifting blame and hiding from God, doing everything they could other than say I did the wrong thing, I knew it was wrong, and I’m sorry, will you forgive me? They did not do that. Imagine if you do that with your spouse. Imagine if your kids do that to you, when you catch them doing something wrong, right? Sick and tired of catching my kids and you realize like you’re not sorry that you did it, you’re only sorry that you got caught. Everyone out there knows that phrase. You’re only sad that you got caught.

Well, the reality is this, repentance is powerful. Repentance is life changing. Repentance is self-accusation where I drop my defenses, I stop defending the ego, and that is humiliating. Well, humus, humble. To be humble means to come from the ground, the Earth, the soil. Isn’t that funny that, that’s where Adam came from? So it means returning to the ground, you and I need to stop being puffed up and elated, and on our high horse and putting ourself on a pedestal. And we need to climb down these 10,000 ladders, so that we can get to the ground of our own being, and kiss the dust of the ground from which we’ve come. That’s what repentance does. This is who I am. Humility is not about hating yourself.

Now, for a lot of people out there in the world, it sounds like I’m saying, like you should just be filled with guilt all the time. And let me tell you, some of you should be filled with guilt and shame because you’ve done horrible stuff and you need to own it. But the real travesty is we’re walking around with the illusion that we’re perfectly fine. You’re okay, I’m okay. Everyone makes mistakes. You didn’t make a mistake. You don’t buy plane tickets to make a mistake. The reason why I got all those questions wrong in geometry, that was a mistake. I didn’t have knowledge. I had a lack of knowledge. But if you have knowledge and you choose to do it anyway, that’s not a mistake.

You can blame someone else. It’s 95% their fault, cool. Own the 5%. But we don’t want to do that, do we? We surround ourselves with walls to protect our ego. Sometimes God breaks into these walls in sudden moments, and calls you to repentance. And sometimes the church asks us all to systematically, and as a family call ourselves to repentance.

Advent A Season Of Penance

Lent and Advent. Lent is very Lent, right? We know Lent is penitential. We feel it in the air and everything, right? The decor of the church, you got that glass jar filled with sand tipped over with a stick coming out of it that doesn’t have any leaves on it. It’s very Lenty, very desert themed, arts and environment get really excited when Lent comes around, but the whole thing feels repentant. But then you come to Advent and because of the commercialism of the holidays,

Advent doesn’t feel very penitential, does it? It feels like Christmas. It feels like gift giving and oh, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, the slay bells and all that stuff. But here’s the deal. Some of you out there, when you heard me get a little accusatory, you pulled back and you got a little nervous because you know there are things in your life that you need to confront, but you’re terrified of confronting them. And see, this is the beautiful thing.

There are two seasons of Advent, or two seasons of penance, Advent and Lent because sometimes we need the swift kick in the butt, that Lent is. 40 days, people are like, what’d you give up? What’d you give up? You can’t really hide during Lent if you’re in a good Catholic community. And Lent is always focused on the cross. It is a confrontation that is pretty fierce. But Advent as a penitential season, it’s sneaky, it’s soft. It’s a babe in a manger in swaddling clothes, it feels like joy because it is, because you and I, if we get, if we just keep persisting in this game of ego protection, you know what we do? We’re afraid of letting in anything that would break down my sense of self, my puffed up, elated, pedestal sense of self.

You know what people say about arrogant people? They’re so full of themselves. That’s a dangerous thing to leave blank, by the way because some people like to shout other things that you say they’re full of and they’re like, ah, themselves, okay, they’re full of themselves. Well, how do you remedy that? Advent for many people, who are fearful at letting those walls come down, become disarmed at the defenseless call to repentance, that is Christ in the manger.

Every time we dawn purple, the church is saying, repent. Repent and believe in the gospel. But now there’s nothing shocking like Lent. There’s something humbling like Advent that has the same call on your heart, the same call that echoes all the way back into the garden. “Where are you?” Where are you in relationship to me? And there He was the Son of God in the cool of the day with Mary and Joseph, with the shepherds and the wise men. There he was the very presence of Yahweh, Elohim, the Lord God with us, Emmanuel. If that isn’t the soft, sneaky, beautiful way to lead you to repentance, then your walls are too thick and you’re in real trouble. But we believe in a God of hope that where your human hope ends, that’s precisely where Christian hope begins.

So my prayer for you this Advent season is that your repentance does not become the shame and blame game of Adam and Eve, but rather you own the shame. You own the guilt. You say, I did this and you confess it with your lips to a priest who doesn’t say, how dare you or I hate you, but rather he says, through the ministry of the church, may God grant you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins, in his name? No. In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. What more beautiful gift can the babe in the manger give you? Domino, Gloria, love it.

Closing Prayer

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord Jesus, there are people out there who feel like Adam and Eve engaged in games of ego protection, hiding from You, Lord, hiding from the fact that yes, they thought that thing, they did that thing, they said that thing, the thing that they thought I will never say, they went that path. They walked down yet another sinful path. They returned to their addiction, they returned to their problem. They wallowed in it. Lord God, for those who are listening to this prayer, may you soften their hearts.

With the story of the little town of Bethlehem, may you soften their hearts by every time they hear a Christmas song about the three kings, that they too might bring their sins, their repentance as gifts to the holy one of God who can take it for His very name means God saves. So Jesus be our savior now, help us to repent. Give us the Holy Spirit of repentance that we might know that Your mercy is bigger than my sense of guilt or shame could ever be, and that Your love is better than life. Jesus, I trust in You and in Your name we pray, amen.

God bless you all.

About Michael Gormley

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